Make Me

Then they strolled out, window shopping, infinitely slow, watching for belated recognition, for phoned-ahead alerts, but seeing nothing. The airport was spacious, and crowds were thin, and folks were relaxed. After Chicago it felt like Sunday. They stopped short of the airside exit and looked at shoes and sweatshirts and turquoise jewelry, until the next plane landed, and a crowd of disembarking passengers bore down, maybe a hundred people, from Minnesota, Reacher thought, with a hundred carry-on bags, and he and Chang slipped in ahead of the last stragglers, and they hustled through the baggage hall in a loose mobile crowd, through the last of the air-conditioned chill, and out to the taxi line, into the baking desert heat. But the wait there was not more than a breathless minute. No one paid attention. No one shuffled, and no one looked at them, and no one looked away.

They took the cab to the car rental compound. No one followed. Reacher had no driver’s license, so Chang lined up and rented a mid-sized Chevrolet. It was bland and white, for anonymity, and it had GPS, for getting around. They waited at the document booth and scanned ahead. No idling cars at the curb. No one else around. It was too hot for pedestrians.

They drove random and incoherent directions for ten minutes, and then they set the GPS for the tony suburb. Where the doctor lived, with McCann’s sister. They found news radio, but there was nothing from Chicago. No time for it. Apparently Phoenix had problems of its own. The GPS took them north, and then east toward Scottsdale, then into a suburban street that led to another, and finally to the right development.

Which had a gatehouse at its entrance.

The gatehouse was built in a decorative style, with a hipped roof and cactus plantings, and a red-striped barrier coming out on the right, and a red-striped barrier coming out on the left. Like a fat bird with two skinny wings.

A gated community. Rich people. Taxpayers. Political donors. The Maricopa County sheriffs on speed dial.

They waited at the curb, a hundred yards short.

It was three in the afternoon. Five, in Chicago.

There was one guard behind the glass.

Reacher said, “We should have figured.”

Chang said, “If she’s heard about her brother, we’ll never get in. Not if that guy has to call the house first. Which I’m sure he does.”

Reacher said, “You have an FBI card.”

“It’s not a badge. He’ll know the difference.”

“He’s a rent-a-cop.”

“He’s a human being with a pulse. That’s all it takes.”

“Mrs. Hopkins was impressed by it.”

“Different generation. Different instincts about the government.”

Reacher said nothing.

Chang said, “You OK?”

“My head hurts.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Let’s try to get in.”

“OK, but any problems, we withdraw gracefully. We live to fight another day. The sister is a bridge we can’t afford to burn.”

She drove on and turned in, and stopped ahead of the barrier, right next to the sliding glass partition. She buzzed her window down. She flipped her hair and turned her head and smiled. She said, “We’re here for Dr. and Mrs. Evan Lair.”

The rent-a-cop was an elderly white man, in a gray polyester uniform. A short-sleeved shirt. Thin, mottled arms.

He hit a red button.

He said, “I hope you folks have a wonderful afternoon.”

The barrier went up.

Chang drove on through. She buzzed her window up again and said, “I wouldn’t want to pay money for security like that.”

Reacher said, “The landscaping is nice, though.”

And it was. There were no lawns. There was nothing that needed water. There were artful rivers of stone, with cactus leaves slashing through like blades, and mists of pale red flowers, and steel sculptures, still bright and uncorroded in the bone-dry air. The land was flat, and the lots were large, and the houses were set at different angles, this way and that, as if they had arrived on the scene by accident.

Reacher said, “It should be up ahead on the left. A quarter-mile, maybe.”

Which was where a lot of cars were gathered. All different makes, all different models, all different colors. Most of them expensive. They were cheek by jowl on the driveway, three across, three deep, then spilling out bumper to bumper to the street outside, all clustered, all packed in tight, all randomly misaligned, with empty curbs ahead of them, and empty curbs beyond them, as if the house at that location was uniquely and strongly magnetic.

Maybe thirty cars in total.

Which was why the barrier had gone up with no questions asked.

There was a message at the gate.

A house party.

Or a cocktail party, or a pool party, or whatever other kind of a party could bring thirty cars over at three o’clock on a hot afternoon.

The mailbox at the end of the crowded driveway said The Lairs’ Lair.